


Did It All with Love

by endoftheweek



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Forgiveness, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Recovery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 10:24:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8664067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endoftheweek/pseuds/endoftheweek
Summary: Voldemort died. What he left behind was Draco Malfoy, desperately fighting for his right to the Manor and Hermione Granger, trying to recreate the world without Voldemort’s mark. A story about healing and what-comes-next.





	1. Forgiveness

PREFACE

In a bizarre turn of events, Draco Malfoy sued the Wizarding government on behalf of Voldemort and won. He was still in Azkaban at the time, and he acted as both witness and attorney. The trials went on for months.

“EX-DEATH EATER,” the newspaper headlines said “SUES GOVERNMENT TO PRESERVE VOLDEMORT’S HATE-FILLED LEGACY”

Which was not as bad as “HERMIONE GRANGER, HEAD OF COMMITTEE FOR POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION: TEARS ON STAND”

Hermione testified, both as the Minister-appointed Head of Committee for Post-War Reconstruction, and as Harry Potter’s best friend. She did not cry. When they asked her about Malfoy Manor she said she hoped they burned it to the ground.

The verdict was shocking but final: The Malfoys, as the family most closely financially linked to the Riddles, would have a say in the destruction of war-sensitive locations and places. It was disgusting.

 I.

They said he would be in chains, though when they met, she didn't see any. His hair was shorn close to his head, back stiff, but none of his childhood anger or fear was visible. She wondered why he was there. She wondered if she should be protesting his high-held chin and his refusal to meet her eyes.

“You’ve been bonded together,” Shacklebolt was telling her. Hermione struggled to look at him. “He cannot go more than ten feet from you. He cannot harm you either. He obviously does not have a wand.”

He was trying to be reassuring. They were standing in what had once been Yaxley’s office in the Ministry. Shacklebolt was now head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but Hermione remembered Yaxley striding around in the same robes all too well.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Harry asked. He was there also, next to her, always faithful. That reminded her: she was doing this for him. She knew he still had nightmares about the war, and that this was the way to get rid of them.

“Don’t be silly. The Court appointed me. I am Head, after all.” Hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done more than enough to end this War.”

Harry looked down. He didn’t like reminders of what happened. Draco Malfoy finally made eye contact with her across the room. He raised a single eyebrow, as if to ask: _have you?_

II

The Gaunt shack was the first place they went together. Malfoy held her wrist so delicately that she worried he would splinch when they apparated.

It was like Harry described: overgrown. Plants that hadn’t been cared for let free. They wrapped around the cottage vindictively. It was still early, but the sky was wide and almost blue between the two mountains. 

He followed her into shadow, through the front door and into three rooms together. There was a worn arm chair.

“Oh!” Hermione could not help herself. “That must be the armchair where Morfin used to sit! And there’s the kitchen…”

She wandered deeper inside. “Merope would work here. Harry told me that she would spend all day scrubbing but it would remain filthy no matter what she did. With or without magic.” Nostalgia rose. “She really was an outcast, wasn’t she?”

“Merope?” She turned around to find Malfoy staring at her. His eyes were the green of dishwater.

“Merope Gaunt. Voldemort’s mother.” And then, vindictively: “She married the _muggle_ Tom Riddle Sr. Voldemort’s father.”

Looking around the Shack was eerily like looking at the Wizarding world now. One man drunk on power had brought it all to pieces.

“Is it her fault, then?” Malfoy asked, as if reading her mind. “Is it her fault that the Dark Lord came to power?”

His eyes were intent on hers. She felt like if she looked away she would fade away in this memory. Lost to his mind.

“No.” It was important she got this correct. “It’s her father’s fault for not loving her. And his father’s fault for not loving him.”

She cast _incendio_ and they walked away together as the house burned down. She thought about vanishing cabinets and sectumsempra. Is love just the remains of what your parents leave behind? His hand brushed against hers.

III

They walked to the graveyard in Little Hangleton.

“Cedric died here,” she said, if only to break the silence. “And Harry dueled Voldemort for the first time here and almost won. He was only fourteen.”

The sky was the color of black tea.

“I know,” Malfoy said. And then “My father was there.”

It returned suddenly, even more sharply against the contrast of her recent forgivings- a desire to hurt him. Draco Malfoy, an impenetrable shell. She wanted to know what he had been thinking, all those months in Court, in Azkaban. She felt only a little guilty when she reached out with her newly-found legilimency skills and searched backwards, eyes closed-

Suddenly he was on her. His elbow hooked around her neck, and a hand pulled her wand out of her hand. It happened so quickly that her only reaction was to jerk her elbow backwards. It had been _stupid_ to let him out of her sight. He absorbed the blow easily and moved his hand lower, holding her around her waist with her arms pinned to her sides. She felt her own wand against her neck.

“Bullying, Granger?” He asked. His voice was quiet. “I thought you were above that sort of sadism.”

“Get off me, Malfoy, or I swear-”

“You swear what?”

She found it, then: the right angle. She jerked her elbow out, back into his face and he immediately let go of her. She took her wand from his loosely held hand and pointed it at him.

_“Incarcerous.”_

Ropes wrapped around his wrist. His nose still bleed red. He looked quite pathetic, standing there.

“You really like breaking my nose, don’t you, Granger?” He asked, and it sounded quirky, something she had never heard from him before. She thought about letting her fist fly in third year and the word _mudblood_.

This time when they apparated she took hold of his wrist instead. They agreed wordlessly: there would be no point in destroying the Riddle graves.

IV 

The anti-apparition wards on Crystal Cave were still in place. Hermione and Draco apparated to a steep, dark cliff. 

The wind was unforgiving and she found all her hair thrown in her face. A stronger wind would have thrown them off the cliff. Everything smelled sharp, like salt and deep water. 

“We have to swim,” she yelled to him over the roar of the waves.

“What?” For the first time that day, he looked alarmed. She hid a laugh, imagining him frantically flailing through the water, so different from his normal, poised self. His eyes were the same color as the sea below.

She untied his wrists. She felt giddy enough to do it with her hands instead of her wand. He waited, looking down at her. He was so much taller than she was. She tried not to touch his skin, and wondered why her heart was beating so loudly. 

She went first. The water was cold and it reached every part of her. She heard him splashing behind and wished she could spare a glance. When they reached the stone steps that lead into the cave, Hermione dragged herself up them and lay down, shivering and exhausted. Draco lay next to her. He looked at her with an odd expression of her face. 

She cast warming spells on both of them.

When it came for the blood sacrifice, Hermione raised her sleeve and pointed the wand at her arm. Malfoy made a sudden motion that gave her pause: “What are you doing?” He asked.

She explained: “It will only open if one of us gives blood.” 

“Let me.”

“Why? Is my blood not pure enough for this?” She sounded as sharp as waves against the cliff and little girls throwing fists.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. But he extended his arm anyway, and she was angry still. She pointed her wand at him and made a small cut. He didn’t react, just pressed his blood against the wall.

It was the second time he had bled that day. It looked so red against his skin. 

“Episkey-”

His nose crunched back into place. He hadn’t been expecting it and his eyes met hers. “Does it ever get tiring Granger? Worrying so much about your enemies?”

“Are you my enemy?”

“During the War I certainly was.”

Hermione summoned the boat. She had spent long hours researching hand gestures and signal magic. It was a multi-layered, complex, process, like trying to hold a conversation in Latin or write poetry. It took her five minutes before she felt its invisible chain in her hand and the boat rose out of the water.

They boarded it, and it started to glide forward without wind. She had been expecting the dead bodies, but she still flinched when a hand surfaced a few feet away like a fish and she made eye-contact with a head just underwater.

“They all died during the War, didn’t they?” He said, looking at her. “They all died and now they’ll lie between the two sides forever.” _And between me and you_ she wanted to add. 

He kept going. “You think you owe it all to those who died. You’d give anything for them to be alive today.” 

“Don’t taunt me, Malfoy.” 

“You think that if you can recreate the world without Voldemort their deaths will become worth it.”

“Voldemort should never have happened. He was a stain on humanity.” 

“But he did _._ Ignoring him doesn’t help anyone, Hermione.”

“Do you want me to tie you up again?”

The boat reached the island. They were distracted, momentarily. In her haste to get out of the boat Hermione accepted Draco’s hand. He suddenly felt so close to her on the tiny island. They approached the basin and looked inside its emptiness.

“Now what?” he asked.

“We reverse everything” she replied, trying not to let her words become symbolic. “From inside out.” Then sarcastically, “any objections?”

He didn’t say anything. 

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. After researching defensive spells for hours she had come to the conclusion that these charms were Voldemort’s unique creation. Combinations of things. Dumbledore’s notes and Harry’s descriptions had not been enough: she needed to be in the cave to understand them.

She felt the basin with her magic. It was empty now, harmless, but still craven with dark magic. It burned against her touch. 

_Destroy_ she tried to convey. She cast every destructive spell she knew. She imagined it gone so vividly that when she opened her eyes she was shocked it was still there. Frustration waxed. _Confringo. Incendio. Destruo._

“It won’t work like that,” he said, and she turned to him, annoyed.

“Why?” “These spells are too dark to defeat with dark magic alone. Try the Patronus instead.” 

She wondered if he was trying to make her look foolish. But then again, he was the one without a wand: she had already won that battle. She lifted her wand to try but his hand was on her wrist. Touching her for the second time that day.

“Try it again,” he said. Now her heart was beating faster because of fear. He was standing behind her, but unlike last time, he did not touch her other than her wand-hand. If she reached backwards with an elbow or a leg, she could easily disarm him. Still, giving him the opportunity to control her magic was reason for fear.

 _Your happiest memory…_ She thought about the few moments at the Manor where she was drifting in and out of consciousness, a haze of pain. When she knew Dobby and Harry and Ron had come for her, that Luna had just escaped. Before they apparated- it wasn’t her friends as much as it was the absence of pain, it felt like nothing she had ever felt before- 

“Expecto Patronum!” She felt Malfoy’s magic coursing through her hand as well, though she struggled to identify it. It was dark and rich, like the glittering night sky. 

What came out of her wand was angry, otter-shaped but violent, dark with dark colors. The usual lightness that accompanies patroni was gone; what remained was vengeance, the cold delight in another’s demise. 

It didn’t need to be told what to do. Or maybe it did, and Draco was telling it. Nonetheless it prowled around the basin, then seemed to rise; up to the center of the cave’s ceiling where it lost form and became cloud-like; then kept expanding until the ceiling was too bright to look at, like the sky early in the morning, and it started to sink down, a blanket of burning darkness and warmth.

She turned to look at Draco behind her and he was already looking at her. The light from above reflected in his eyes, created shadows across his features. He looked haunted.

She knew what he was going to do before he did it. Maybe this entire trip had been building up to this moment. Feeling this warmth and darkness together- it was all too much. He pressed his lips against hers.

He tasted like cold wind and the emptiness around all of them. It scared her. She put her fingers in his hair and pushed against him. She wanted to feel something from him. He put his hands on her waist. They broke off awkwardly, taking deep breaths. 

She stepped away. He was staring at her, but she couldn’t look at him. She was embarrassed and unraveling all at once.

Standing amidst all these dead people, lives lost because of Voldemort, how can she ignore their sacrifice? 

She cast incarcerous again and ignored him. The anti-Apparition wards were gone. She awkwardly held him by the wrist and apparated them away.


	2. Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco returns to Azkaban.

V

They went to Malfoy Manor next. It was deserted; Lucius and Draco had spent the last few months in Azkaban and Narcissa had moved out. There was yellow caution tape and anti-Intruder spells everywhere

She didn’t ask for his opinion. This was his house until his family went and tortured her in it. She walked through the fancy entrance hall and into the Dining Hall where Voldemort once lived.

“Confringo!” There would be no fairytale magic this time around. There was only a house that had once housed terrible people.

She Destroyed and Vanished the dining table. Splinters of wood everywhere. She went after the paintings next: “filthy mudblood!” they called down on her but methodically she committed the genocide of oil on paint people.

When they were just singed pieces of paper and empty facing holes she remembered Draco. But all he was doing was pacing, mutely away from here. He didn’t object at all.

Without comment she took his hand and they apparated away.

VI

They arrived in Hogsmeade as night fell. It was empty.

Malfoy was looking at her closely. He raised a hand to her cheek slowly, like he was worried he was going to scare her away. He wiped away a tear she hadn’t noticed.

She did not want that. She was Hermione Granger and she was more robust than this. But she never would have thought she would describe Draco Malfoy as _silently pleading._

In Hogwarts they attracted stares from the students. Hermione Granger of the Golden Trio, magical creatures activist and rising face in the Ministry with Draco Malfoy, ex-blood purist. She wondered what the world would make of their relationship. Did it make sense to them?

The first floors girls lavatory was muscle memory to find. Inside she made silly-sounding ssss sounds like Ron and Harry did while Draco watched her in the mirror. Something must have worked, because eventually the snakes slid apart and they were let into the Chamber.

“Harry and Ron were convinced in Second Year that you were the Heir,” she said, if only to break the silence. “I had to talk them out of it.”

They entered the large and empty hall.

“A not unreasonable assumption,” he said.

The basilisk skin loomed on the right. Ministry Officials had already come to harvest its bones and she was pretty sure even Slughorn had come to secrete away a few layers of skin.

“We never thought it would be Ginny. She had always seemed so strong.”

Hermione paused. “And she is. But sometimes I wonder,” she paused again.

They were walking around the perimeter of the Chamber now. “You wonder what?” he asked.

“I wonder if she and I are forced to be weak in ways other people are not,” she voiced her confession quietly, though it echoed around the ornate hall. “Bellatrix knew what she was doing, that day in the Manor when she singled me out. And not just because I’m muggle-born. Because she knew I prioritize Harry and Ron over myself till the very end, because torturing me would be more difficult than torturing anyone else.”

She didn’t know why she was telling him this, why she was alone with Draco Malfoy in the Chamber of Secrets, and most of all, why it still felt like healing.

“It’s as if everyone wants us to break. To open ourselves up to love- like Ginny did with the Diary, like I do with my friends.”

“You’re tired of hurting for others,” he said.

“Yes.”

-

They reached the center of the hall and stopped. There was something about them and the center of things.

“We should destroy this entire Hall,” Draco said. “Let it burn. Like you said in Court.”

Hermione looked around at the golden arches, the ornate ceiling. Snakes carefully carved out of what looked molten. It was alarming how beautiful things could be created out of hate.

“No,” she said. “Let’s leave it like this. Someone needs to remember.”

VII

The last site was the Great Hall. The Ministry had alerted the school to their presence; they were given license to do whatever necessary “to consider the impact of the War” while it was blocked off from students.

They considered it together. She took his hand in hers. So much could change in 12 hours.

“Shall we leave this as it is now?” Hermione asked. “It’s still a happy place for all the students. And it is for me, too.”

But Draco shook his head. “It deserves more than that.”

He lead her out and away, to the Headmaster's’ office. Hermione knew the password. McGonagall was acting as temporary Headmistress. Hermione let go of Draco’s hand when they entered the Office. McGonagall saw Draco first and instinctively drew her wand but then flushed when she saw Hermione following.

“I’m sorry Ms Granger, Mr. Malfoy.” She paused. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Draco’s expression was blank again, like it had been in Shacklebolt’s office. “We need to speak to the Sorting Hat.”

McGonagall raised an eyebrow like she did in their schooldays. She looked at Hermione and Hermione nodded. She took out the Sorting Hat and all three of them stood in front of it.

“Sorting Hat,” Draco commanded.

It woke slowly, leathery face undecided if it wanted to emerge from hat-form. “Yes?”

“From now on, you will re-sort students every year. You will not sort a student in the same house two years in a row. You will not base it on anything other than where you think they will _learn_ the most.”

There were three gasps in the room. The loudest came from McGongall. “Malfoy, surely-”

“It’s the only way we can prevent another Dark Lord from rising. Slytherin is breeding grounds for pure blood extremism. If every child goes where their parents want them to go they will never learn anything. We’ve got to force people to open their eyes to the world, or else they will gratefully keep them closed.”

Hermione thought about Merope Gaunt and then about Malfoy bleeding for the sacrifice at the caves. She nodded. “I agree. I know it rarely helps when the Ministry intervenes with the school, but if you think it is a good idea Professor, I strongly reccomend it.”

McGonagall was still looking at Draco in surprise. But then she smiled. “I find myself agreeing with both of you. There’s no point in sticking to old traditions for the sake of it. So be it.”

It was a far more impactful monument than Hermione could ever have imagined

VIII

Hermione had never really noticed how attractive Draco was. When they walked onto the grounds together he towered over her and the bones of his face looked sculpted upwards. He stopped and looked at her.

“You’re supposed to take me back to Azkaban now that we’ve finished,” he told her.

She thought about dementers, the _soulessness_ , how beautiful their joint patronus had been. “It hardly seems fair.”

“Not much of this was.”

They kiss again. This time she can feel his lips moving against hers and his tongue. It’s not so empty.

He backed her against the wall. “I’m not going to be noble, Hermione,” he said into her ear. “I’m begging you: let me go. I’ll leave Great Britain. I’ll take you with me. We’ll never have to see any of this ever again.”

His knee was between her legs. She held on to his shoulders like she wanted to anchor him to the ground. She had never known you could kiss someone like this before.

Her voice broke. She wanted to so bad. “Draco-”

“You’ll never have to carry around someone else’s pain again. I’ll carry it for you.”

“Draco, I can’t just _go_. But I will fight for you every step of the way.”

He closed off to her. He stepped backwards and turned away. She wondered if there were tears in his eyes. She took his wrist gently and felt fractured in a thousand different ways at once, like her life was on the verge of too many things.

She apparated them to Azkaban and she hated herself for doing it. A dementor was waiting for them, outside the craggy-prison.

He did not look at her.

“Do you hate me now?”

“Of course not.” But he still did not look at her. His posture was already signaling defeat, slumped.

“I’ll fight for you. Until you come out- every step of the way.”

“You keep saying that.”

They regard each other. The Dementor slowly drifts closer, impatient. She stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Not much longer, I promise.”

“Good bye, Hermione Granger,” he said. “I hope you have a good life.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

He stepped away from her. She watched him go. Then, quicker than anticipated- he was back, alive again. He held her in his arms and looked into her eyes. “Voldemort was pathetic to think he could defeat someone like you.” And he kissed her for the last time: not like before, slow now.

Then he left. Hermione watched him go.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends. Like most of my writing, I am lukewarm towards this one. I have written part 2, though I am yet to edit. Please kudos/follow/comment if you like! Fuel for ONWARDNESS.


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